this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
1332 points (99.1% liked)
Memes
45625 readers
872 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
One thing to point out is that Columbus wasn't challenging established thinking about the earth's shape, but rather its size. The educated populace at the time was on the ball with the earth being a sphere.
And the critics of Columbus WERE RIGHT! He was vastly underestimating the size of the earth. If North America hadn't existed and it had just been one big ocean, he and the expedition would have perished in the middle of nowhere. Of course, the size had been calculated before his expedition (the actual values turned out be extremely close to what had been calculated), so he should have known better. There's a reason he had trouble getting funding for his expedition...
I'm still somewhat frustrated that our history classes taught (maybe still do, I've been out of high school a long time) that all the naysayers thought the earth was flat.
My recollection is that Columbus was also wrong about its size. He thought the distance from Europe to Asia via the Atlantic was much smaller than it really is, but got lucky and found the Americas on the way